A word cloud of some choice comments posted on Tone Madison over the past two years.

If you're a regular reader of this website, you may have noticed that the comments section at the bottom of each story is gone. Yep, we got rid of comments on Tone Madison. This wasn't really a big or soul-searching decision for us.

I think it's foolish for publications to try and keep their audience at arm's length. We want the people who read our site to talk with us, challenge us, correct us, give us ideas for improving the site, and turn us on to things. The comments weren't the best way for that to happen.

It's not that lots of people were using the comments to troll. Most of the comments and discussions we've gotten on the site have been thoughtful and respectful and all that. But even more often than that, people just haven't used the comments at all. And even when a story does inspire a vigorous discussion in the comments, the discussion about that same story on Facebook and/or Twitter turns out to be way more robust. All of which is fine.

In fact, we’ve made it even easier to talk about what you read here on Facebook and Twitter—if you highlight any bit of text on the site, you can grab it, annotate it with your pithy remarks, and share the whole thing on your network of choice using the Genius web annotation tool. Or don’t.

You can also, as always, email us[editor@tonemadison.com], or paint "hipster douchebags" on the town water tower. We'll look forward to talking with you.

In memoriam, as it were, I present to you a few of the finest comments we have received since we launched the site in October 2014.

The "irascible yet lovable"

The "mildly stalkerish/playing the Coastie card"

The "super sarcasm," the "tired BS" and the "quoting Modest Mouse for some reason"

The "if you write about culture in any capacity, these two words will haunt you no matter what"